Mr Beattie offered his resignation as party leader on Monday after he was widely accused of using racist and misogynistic language in a series of historical tweets.
Mr Beattie spent Tuesday afternoon meeting with party officials and MLAs following the eruption of the controversy on Saturday evening when Mr Beattie tweeted a joke that referred to the wife of political rivalIt escalated after focus turned to Mr Beattie’s historical conduct on Twitter and a series of contentious remarks about women, Muslims, members of the Travelling community, and people with mental health issues were unearthed.
The decorated military veteran said that while he was not offering it as an excuse, one explanation for his “dark humour” could be that it was a “coping mechanism” for what he had experienced on the battlefield. Mr Beattie has apologised for tweeting a joke about Mr Poots and his wife on Saturday night while North Dorset MP Simon Hoare, who chairs the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster, retweeted it but deleted it within a short space of time.Mr Beattie told the BBC on Tuesday afternoon he was “on the cusp of quitting” as Ulster Unionist leader on Monday and had offered colleagues his resignation.“I offered my resignation and people said ‘let’s engage and see where we go’,” he said.
He said the tweets demonstrated a “clear failing in myself, I have to own up to that” and said he asked people to “look at me [as] the person I am now and maybe not judge me from 10 years ago”.
Oh yea, here comes the unionist times to the rescue.
The past, like a few days ago? Why are you printing this manure, without challenge?
Now, What's the surprise here about these views? Aren't they pretty much of the discriminative views used as justification for the establishing of 'The North of Ireland' in the first place?
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